I feel like that's just the nature of Dota. Things like "The Play" and the fountain hooking are a result of the way Icefrog balances the game. Buff weaker heroes rather than nerf strong ones, etc. There are so many game changing abilities and items, it produces more exciting plays by definition. It's way easier to reach the "next-level" plays in Dota.

From a production standpoint, the only thing I think Valve did a lot better than Riot was the fact that they had literally zero downtime for the entire 5 day event. There was never a screen overlay saying "coming up next". There was always either a game going, analyst desk, video features, or live interviews.

They are exactly the same, if not a bit more tamed for Dota2, Pudge for example can no longer curve his hook or extend it with force staff. He can fountain hook in dota1 but in dota2, the new hook mechanic is lame and dulls the spirit.

Its because Dota is balanced around very specific and unique heroes. LoL's champions are balanced towards the middle, you have to if there are champs that are "pay walled" with IP. Dota's are far more varied, you are just too used to LoL and forget how crazy some of the stuff in dota you can do.

They absolutely are more cool and unique, but that comes with the disadvantage of being far more complex, which is what Riot really wants to avoid. It's the reason people say Dota has the steepest learning curve of any game.

I'll use the example of Brewmaster. Playing against Brewmaster for the first few times is infuriating and confusing. His ultimate splits him into 3 separate units, each with multiple abilities. One has a stun and passive magic immunity, and carries all of his passives from his normal form. One has an extremely long cyclone and wind walk. The third has extremely fast movement speed and a burn aura around it.

Most heroes in LoL, you can figure out what they do the first time you see them. To figure out a hero like Brewmaster, you pretty much just have to play him yourself.

Unfortunately you cant do fountain hooks anymore. I dont know why Valve patched it, even though in the past they said "it was too fun to patch it". But i guess once it was used by a world class player like Dendi, in a world class game against Tongfu, that was enough to nerf it. Which is really unfortunate because not only it is spectacular, it is also really hard to do it.

i think it's more that it used to be fun, but now it's just too frustrating to play against.

if it was done once or twice in that Na'vi game it would be ok, but they turned that game around with 6,7 fountain hooks. and while you do need skill to pull it of it gives unfair advantage, that is hardly counterd (counter needs better timing than actual fountain hook)

You can counter it similarly to how you counter a normal hook, by having other things in front of you. And it doesnt need any kind of timing, just positioning.

A fountain hook is significantly harder than a normal hook, since you have literally milliseconds to get into the right position, aim and hit the hook. If you do it too fast, you go back to the fountain alone after hooking the enemy, so you basically initiate a 4 vs 5 fight while you are in the fountain. If you do it too slow, you are going back to the fountain, leaving again your team with only 4 players, right before a team fight starts.

Even if you tp back to the fight, it costs money and more importantly it costs time. You need to tp and walk to the fight but by that time, your team might as well be dead. The only other "professional" game that had fountain hooks was this

And Root was failing to hit most of them. Just because Dendi, the best Pudge player in the world, was coordinated with his team(one of the best in the world) and managed to do it successfully in a single game doesnt mean that it is broken. If it was broken, they would have done it against Alliance too. So there has been literally 1 game where fountain hook worked.

They patched it because it was overpowered and completely game changing. Na'vi would have never won that game without it. Most importantly, though, is it was an all-or-nothing, anti-climactic play. If you land the hook, that hero is guaranteed dead. If you miss, you waste time, money, and TP cooldown. It was fun to watch for one game, but if every game was like that it would get boring quickly.